The Key To Sleep Training Success - Consistency

The worst thing a parent wants to hear when they're deathly sleep deprived, especially when they  have been putting every last bit of energy into teaching their child to sleep, is that they are making things worse, not better.

But it happens. And it happens surprisingly often.

You don't want to be this person, and I don't want you to be this person. So let's talk about one of the main ways to avoid
this oh so sad scenario.

Are You Being Consistent? No Really, Are You?
The key to changing any behavior (whether it be sleep or discipline related) is consistency. Research has even shown that the sleep training approach you choose isn't all that important for good results, it's the consistency that makes all the difference.

Many of us think we're being consistent with sleep, but if you look real closely, like when it's 3 am in the morning and you hardly know if you or someone else is controlling your body, or when baby starts to cry and you've recently ran out of your coffer or diet coke, you'll see that there's some inconsistency sneaking in there.

Inconsistency often goes something like this:

• You've finally just finished up your late night work project after a hard day of taking care of three whiny (and adorable) children and you lay down to catch some much needed shut eye. A few minutes after you fall asleep you are jolted awake by your baby's cries in the other room. You jump out of bed and run into your baby's room to pop in the pacifier (or breast or bottle) so you and your little one can get right back to sleep. Right now you can't even remember what your sleep plan was (although you recall it being different from what you just did), you just know that you want to get back to sleep!
• You and your husband are great at working as a team and both take turns putting your toddler to sleep. The only problem is that one of you doesn't always keep to the sleep plan. Instead of putting your toddler down awake like you've done for the last 1-2 years, one of you ends up lying down and falling asleep next to him when he asks you to.
• You've recently decided that it's time to wean your baby from breastfeeding to sleep. You've turned into a human pacifier and you're pretty sure if things don't change ASAP you're not going to make it to your next birthday, if next week. So you put a gentle sleep plan in place, one that you've committed to and sworn to follow through, night and day. Day one of your sleep plan goes by pretty well. It's a bit of a tiring nightmare, yes, but you've stayed strong! Day two starts off pretty well too, but then you get to the middle of the night. You are SO DANG TIRED! Does baby have any idea how tired you are? You continue with your gentle sleep plan (yea you!) and put baby back to sleep. And then it happens. Baby wakes up. AGAIN. Like 2 minutes after you just spend a heck of a long time putting her down. You can't do this anymore! You want to, but you are spent. You know that if you just nurse baby for a couple minutes she and you will both happily go back to sleep. So you do it. Just this once. Only, we both know it probably won't be just this once. It'll either turn into a complete veto of this sleep plan, or it'll be something that keeps popping up every now and again.
• Your mother watches your baby 2 days a week. She doesn't agree with how you do things and does everything, well, pretty much the opposite of how you ask.
• You make a sleep training plan and on night one, 30 minutes into it, you decide that this just isn't working and that maybe this plan isn't right for your baby.

Does any of that sound familiar? I know I've fallen victim to inconsistency over the years, more than I'd like to admit.  The thing is, this inconstancy doesn't just stall your sleep progress, it can make it worse.

A Little Something Called Intermittent Reinforcement
The problem with this lack of consistency is that it makes learning a lot more difficult for your child. He doesn't know what to expect from one moment to the next and consequently doesn't know how to respond. In fact, he may even start to sleep worse because of it. Why? Because of intermittent reinforcement. When you are inconsistent with your actions, it encourages your child to persist even more to get what they want.

Think of your child in a candy store. He asks for candy, you say no (this may or may not be followed by some broadway-worthy theatrics by your child). He asks again, you once again say no. This goes on two more times and then you say, "Ok, fine. Just this once!" But guess what. It won't be just this once. You have now taught your child that he just needs ask 4 times and then he'll get what he wants. In the future, he'll make sure to ask at least 4 times, likely more if you don't give in (hey, it worked before, I must just need to bother mom even longer this time).  Intermittent reinforcement at its best!

The same things happens with sleep. If you give in to just one more book, one more show, sleeping by him or go to him when he's crying at random times, you've just taught him to be even more persistent with these behaviors next time around.

Ouch.

This part of the post will be hard for some of you to swallow, but if you're going to start tackling sleep problems on your own, it's crucial to understand.  This concept is one of the most important components of managing sleep behavior, and well, any behavior really.

No sleep strategy works unless it is consistency carried out, day and night, all 7 days of the week.

Being inconsistent isn't fair for him and it isn't fair for you. So when you start to implement a sleep training plan, make sure you don't start it until you are ready to follow through.

How Do I Stay Consistent With Sleep Training?

• Choose A Sleep Plan That You Can All Live With - If whoever is taking care of your child isn't gung ho about your sleep plan, then in all likelihood, they won't be following through. 
• Make sure it's a good time for you and your baby. If you're about to go out of town or everyone is sick, right now is not the best time.
• Make sure you are committed to change. Be prepared for things to get tough. Doing any sort of sleep training is hard, really hard. Worth it? Yes, but still hard. So if your heart isn't into it, you'll find it hard to put forth the energy to follow through. And if you don't follow through, well, you've just landed yourself into intermittent consistency land. And we all know where that takes you (and your confused baby). It's normal to feel like giving up or second guess what you are doing. Commit to following it through for at least several days, then re-evalutate.
• Get some kind of support. As I mentioned, sleep training can be physically and emotionally draining. Having someone to talk to during the process (or even someone to be accountable to) can help out so much!
• Keep the end goal in mind. All this hard work will have an awesome outcome--great sleep for your baby and your whole family! Keep this in mind when things get tough and you feel like giving up.

Is Some Inconsistency OK?
No one is going to be perfect all the time, and no one can possibly keep things totally consistent all the time. During sleep training, it's best if you can try to be as consistent as possible to send the right message across to your child. After your child is sleeping well, some inconsistencies will be OK. Whether or not certain inconsistencies (like reading one extra book one night) will have any sort of bad effect totally depends upon your child and also on how you wishy washy you are with parenting overall. You'll have to experiment to see what things you can be more and less relaxed with.